The subconscious ego can be at least partly responsible for depression...

I think DMT is a medicine that can help most ...

And i dont see any physical adiction comming from it at all..

At least..not anything serious ...like...BOOZE... cocane or herion...

I can take it on days i choose or go weeks without it when i choose.....

Im glad it was put on earth for those who need it !

Like the mana ....found in the desert ..the bible speeks of...as a ..[form of food].. that saved many from starving...yes a form of food for the soul...

I guess I should have named this thread "DMT used as an anti-depressive"

Did Barker ever reply to Nathaniel's questions?

I would like to echo this question.

That Strassman moment was ridiculous, he didn't even answer the question and was very smug and defensive in his reply. Each to their own opinion and all that, but I found that he was quite rude about it, which was unnecessary.

Theories are great and can open the doors to research if they are conceivable, and I often (though certainly not always) find many peoples different ideas interesting. Though they are just that, theories.

Nothing should be presented as fact unless there is substantial evidence that can prove that something is fact, at least in terms of our own experience as we know it, because that is all us monkeys can do

Peace

Macre

That sucks Snozz, what a crappy attitude. For someone who was given so much credit for something he still hasn't done, he has very little grace. Can we please just stop giving him any traction at all ? He's the most common start point for a fresh mind's journey into the mystical argumentative land of DMT woo. This forum has done far more, with so much less ego than Strassman.

No he has not, he never answers anything specific, which is surprising because he is a chemist and hardcore atheist scientist. Which to me is puzzling because if you're an atheist doing DMT, isn't that just doing drugs? Which I don't have anything against doing drugs, but it just doesn't seem right. I will ask him again, this seems important enough.

A closed mind can be devoutly religious or hardcore materialistic, even both. Even neither.

A lot of members of the forum are atheists, as they lack a belief in any specific god, myself included. Are they just thrill-seekers? I consider psychedelic experience to be direct and genuine, coming from within.

Good idea to ask him again, he has quite a few claims to back up, but something tells me a lot of people here are still quite a few steps ahead on this stuff, as they were in the past.

EDIT - Removed

Blessings
~ND

..most peak experiences or 'highs' (DMT or non-substance induced) followed by re-immersion into ordinary and habitual patterns can lead to 'lows'..re-calibration..some good neurotransmitter discussion here by Nathaniel.Dread, drfaust and dreamer042..

while it's a tangent, i can't resist also commenting on Snozz's report of Dr. Strassman saying:

..i can't really see how Dr. Strassman, not being a rabbi, or full-time mystic is really in a position to have 'the conversation' fully that he arrogantly suggests either..and to limit even just monotheistic concepts that could be related to some DMT experiences to judaism seems either ethnocentric or just unresearched of other traditions..perhaps when he is also more fluent in classical gnosticism, islam, vedanta etc etc, he could be in a position to have that conversation..though much of the evidence could also point to the many polytheistic world traditions..
his qualifications are as a doctor, and i have yet to see him demonstrate his credentials or grasp of mystical traditions, beyond some surface coffee table speculations..
in short, i think he needs a bit more spiritual scholarly education before what, i agree with cyb, is a cash-in, and a short sighted one at that..
the arrogance..

now..back to the DMT 'afterglow'..certainly anecdotal comparison would support the release over approximately a week theory..but the 'depression' reported by DisEmboDied may not necessarily or simply be 5HT metabolism based..just psychologically the expectation of such a state as the DMT one, or the conceptual framework that it exists but is no longer being experienced (e.g. while at a boring job or task) can lead to a disappointment or 'downer' in a sense..but i guess the depressive state in this case would need to be characterised more in order to attempt to classify it..
but there shouldn't be any kind of withdrawal going on here, in the technical sense, i would have thought..
.

"A lot of members of the forum are atheists, as they lack a belief in any specific god"


I am an agnostic, the only people who know whether or not there is an afterlife are dead people.
I do not believe in any specific god, I used to be an atheist before DMT, now I am relatively sure there is an afterlife. I experienced how disembodied consciousness could be possible.

I am currently studying and hand writing the Tao Teh Ching. It works for me at this point in my life.



Still no answer, I do not think there will be at this point probably. (It is a bit discouraging, yet realistic, that after 40 years he still has no idea what to make of it. I gave up trying to figure out if it is real or not after 5.

For a scientist, it must be hard to perform study with no measurable parameters to put in numbers, and lack of statistics due law restrictions.

Ah yes, for not believing in any monotheistic God I must be doing this to get high?

So tell me again why am I not allowed to seek new realms of reality when I do not believe in any God? You sure must have a good rational argument for that.


Kind regards,

The Traveler

A friend of mine who works with "dying people" in "spiritual" hospice care, that friend informs me that he finds nothing more sublime than working with "open-hearted atheists" because they seem to approach that last and final "trip" with the most grace and the least "blinders" and with no hand-holds. He marvels at the grace with which they approach their end. Believers of all stripes, he informs me, often suffer the temptation to hold tightly to their beliefs and they often miss the strangeness and uniqueness of the "trip".

Experience requires no belief. I don't, for example, "believe" that sugar is sweet. I taste sugar and I call that taste a sweet taste. I toggle the word sweet and the experience of sweetness and I find enough of a fit to keep using the word. Belief has nothing to do with it.

To get back to what I see as the essence of DisEmbo's concern and which was highlighted by his comment that he might be using DMT as an anti-depressant. I see a concern here with healing and a concern with "mental pain". Both of those concepts are real enough to me. I have experienced and I do experience a degree of anguish, anxiety, and depressive states.

I work with those states in various ways. My favored method is investigation. DMT and friends have been a part of my investigation of my mental set and my mental states and how they correlate or do not correlate with other aspects of my experience. But they have only been a part. I rely mostly on relations with self and with others, on self understanding, and on basic life.

However, I would not lean too heavily on DMT and friends as anything other than an investigative tool, and a short-lived and acute one at that. I would expect and I do find that my mental set and my capacity to tolerate my mental states depends quite a bit more on what I have developed and grown as a full person than on any chemical.

Even with the chronically administered anti-depressant medications, the help derived from the use of these medications is dependent upon self understanding and/or therapy combined with the medication and not the medication alone. Numerous studies point to the fact that none of these "medications" is taken in isolation; they seem to work best as resets or looseners of mental habits and patterns. What we do with that loosening seems to determine our personal lives more than just the loosening does.

The acute and the chronic 5HT friends or supporters do seem to enhance plasticity and they do seem to of help to some people in loosening or dissolving attachments to the "depressive pole". They, however, do not seem to, in my experience, magically remove the "depressive pole". Whatever that depressive pole is for us, I suspect that it demands respect, if not attachment. A loosening is only to me, an opening gambit. A loosening is only an aid in work and investigation. It is not the "entirety" of the game, in my opinion.

My advice, if I gave any, would be to not lean too heavily on DMT and friends as cause of trouble or as panacea for trouble. Trouble is afoot. I ask myself, "what kind of relationship can I enter into with my troubles such that my relationship becomes not an avoidance or a rigid one-sided 'solution' but a conversation and a working with?"

Being agnostic does not stop you being an atheist. Atheism, although definitions change from dictionary to dictionary as I will demonstrate, implies at least alack of belief in god (or gods).

It's no surprise that people debate this. I copied some dictionary entries below.

Agnosticism:

Collins: A person who holds that knowledge of a Supreme Being, ultimate cause, etc, is impossible.
Cambridge: Someone who does not know, or believes that it is impossible to know, if a god exists.

So it's either you know nobody knows, or you don't know. Sucks to have to pick and choose from what used to be the be-all and end-all of what a word means, I guess those days are over.

Had I gone by the Collins definition, I would never have identified as agnostic myself. How do I know nobody has the answer? I can't know that for sure, just like I can't know that god not exist. What if it is possible? Agnosticism does not seem that open minded to me if the Collins definition (or half of the Cambridge definition...?) is correct.

You yourself may even be an atheist, but you have to explain your definition before someone else fills in the gaps and attacks you for it (ah, the internet...), because legitimate sources for the definition are in opposition:


Atheist:

Collins online dictionary:
A person who does not believe in God or gods

Cambridge online dictionary:
Someone who believes that God does not exist


Again these don't really sound the same to me. Who writes these things? It's almost designed to trip you up. Either way, both definitions imply at the very least a lack of belief in a god.

So one thing I can say this does suggest is that you, by being agnostic...



And backed up by a lack of belief in any specific god...



...are still an atheist, And as such...



Innit ?

lol, the tangents of this topic...but well said Traveler..
and really appreciate your ponderings and observations, DisEmboDied

it seems the quote Traveler responded to is a bit 'this way or that', cut-and-dry dualist..
either 'believes in god' or not..and the implication that 'not' is simply 'recreational' use of a substance..

appart from all the various 'spiritual' concepts (discussed in other threads) which are not belief in monotheistic (or even polytheistic) god(s), "..new realms of reality..."' is another good description of what DMT can give perception of..and of course 'reality' is also a topic deeply discussed and debated on the Nexus..
..certainly i personally would describe myself as 'non-materialist', but i chose not to impose or endorse any particular view..i am 'open'..

many years ago (about 19), a woman who experienced extracted DMT for the first time described it as "a journey through all the facets of her mind'..and i think this is as valid a generalised description of the DMT experience as any, god or no god..and would also relate to neurological/psychological models and theories of it's action..

i think ultimately it's about perception...how the perception is interpreted is up to each individual..
and such interpretation is linked to emotional response, which is linked to neurotransmitters other than 5HT, as well as conditioning, which will affect such things as 'highs' or 'lows' before, during and after..


..this is ridiculous, haha..has the language gone mad? (referring to Collins)

as far as I understand, Gnostic means Knowledge (from ancient greek, specifically spiritual or 'direct' knowledge of the divine) and the 'A' is negation (like Sanskrit) ..so, by any definition i've ever understood, Agnostic means 'don't know'..
but language is a tricky beast..Terence McKenna said our language creates (or defines) our reality..
perhaps this is why there is so much difficulty defining let alone 'explaining' the DMT experience..

as for the actual topic here ..can DMT (or any other entheogen) treat depression, i'm of the opinion that, in the experience and the 'afterglow' (which is still probably the experience at lower level release) yes (in many) ..but long term treatment of depression requires other methods to supplement, which are not substance related (traditional anti-depressenants included) ..and here we get to all those threads where people talk about exercise, diet, good company, gardening, hobbies, yoga and meditation..but i don't want to sound like a new ager..
.

I think dmt can trigger certain emotions or events that we are supposed to deal with.
Ive had a long path of pain that i had to go through before i could let myself heal.

Its been so many times now that dosing dmt or some other psych has launched me into a mess of heavy energy that hit me in the face.
Sometimes its been very hard but its always rewarding.
For me the trip is only the classroom of the molecules.
The real work is in the homework that you get to do before/after.

I go along with this theory.




To me, yes, because.. see "below"




here starts "below" ..it may have a posivite effect on depression and maybe all other psychological "disorders", by experiencing a different perspective of the so far percepted reality, at least on a short time perspective, which may affect patterns of behaviour by easing the stickiness to someones own believes and thus lead to a longterm alteration.
Nevertheless, I think that the occurance of many psychological and even many somatic symptoms is the result of a dysbalance in someones experience of her-/himself. In other words, someone experiences her-/himself as highly incongruent (percepted reality and someones believes do not cover) and has no ideas how to cope with the stimuli. Stress, this might be an important factor, occurs and because of an individual vulnerability results in f.e. depressive behaviour. To me, it is important that someone can never be depressive, more, someone behaves/feels depressive, because depression is a concept, a cluster of specific symtpoms in my behaviour, thoughts and emotions.
What I observe in psychotherapy (CBT-approach) is that all these exercises (going out of bed, cleaning myself, having company, doing my hobbies, let's say caring about myself) can have a big positive short term effect on someones mood and even on some subconsious assumptions about her/-himself and others. Nevertheless, to me the full integration of someones experiences in her/his system, based on a unconditioned-self-love/trust, seems to be a (the) key-factor in longterm healthiness.




According to this and looping back, at first line, entheobotanics may play a big role in the treatment of any psychological disorders (especially for traditional-therapy non responder) because they enable someone to experience a different perspective of life, of themself. But it is not done with just the experience of some new perspectives, an other bottleneck seems to be the integration and alteration of these experiences in someones own believe system and daily life. My selfimage seems to be the the result of all the small actions I do during days and nights.

I like myself, regardless and unconditioned. To say this, seems to be already a religious act in western society.

Referring to this thread: "HEY YOU! Why did you post that???" https://www.dmt-nexus.me/forum/d...&m=573115#post573115. I think someone can treat others (whatever "others" defines) just like her/himself. If I do not love, respect and care about myself, how can I love, respect and care about others?




You can give me names and define me (as it will always be a projection of yourself) and as long as I am alive, I decide for myself, I am.

tseuq

^.. ..it's humour...

om shanti, om peace

Barker responded,

"I didn’t mention anything about re-uptake and I’m not interested in a debate. We should not presume that we know everything about
how DMT acts or what it effects because we don’t."

About the atheism thing, I always thought that atheists simply do not believe in a spirit world, or an afterlife, that we simply die and turn to dirt. At the university I was at, all the Philosophy professors were atheists of that sort.

About me saying that "… hardcore atheist scientist. Which to me is puzzling because if you're an atheist doing DMT, isn't that just doing drugs? Which I don't have anything against doing drugs, but it just doesn't seem right."

In Barker's case he believes the DMT experience is a pure hallucination, not that there could be other Gods, other realms or dimensions. Isn't that more like just doing drugs? Or is the study of the mind which is produced by a brain a good enough reason?

The appeal to the Straussman/Barker authority fallacy has become apparent to me and I am now embarrassed that I thought that someone for a minute knows whats going on. We are just as qualified from our years of study.

In Barker's defense, he does think that Straussman has gone off the deep end, and treated his new book with humor, and says that he told him that.

IDK, I guess this reality can become boring and mundane once the afterglow wears off, no biggie. I am still here to learn something or pass whatever test that life is challenging me to.

All of your points were spot on, and I am very grateful to read and integrate every one of them.